Lost Letters
by firenze083
Summary: A to R alphabet drabbles about the things they’ll never say and know, and the words for every letter lost between them. HouseCuddy, Wilson
1. A to J

**Afterlife**

When he dies for over a minute, he learns that the afterlife is full of legs playing volleyball, legs farming, and Cuddy's voice. He tilts his head to one side, listening. Mostly, it is just 'Paddles!', 'Clear!' and 'Charge!'

He never tells her this, but the reason he came back is to tell her to shut up, because hearing Cuddy panic just did not happen, in this world or the next. He never comes around to it, because the moment he breathes, Cuddy breathes too. He's never heard her panic voice again, and often wonders if he just imagined it.

**Baby**

She picks out the colors of the nursery in her mind like her baby is already born. Pink, because she already knows it would like a girl, and doesn't care if pink is too girly. The bassinet at the foot of her bed would be pink, too. Once, in the mall, she almost buys soft fist-sized shoes in white lace for it, but then remembers that it doesn't exist.

He, on the other hand, brings it up whenever he feels the need to see her human, to see her flinch, to want to be there at the moment she remembers.

**Candy**

He finds himself lucky that he can swipe so much candy in a day without the nurses realizing. Sometimes he would wait until she reaches out for the chocolates Wilson asks for, then grabs for the swirly lollipops a dollar apiece. He reasons out to his eye-rolling friend that contributing so much to saving lives entitles him to free candy. Also that she never notices anyway.

When he leaves at five, Cuddy asks the nurse how much she owes for the day, and pays for his ten-dollar candy raid with a small smile. 'The price of brilliance,' she always says.

**Dinner**

He calls her at home four times with one hour intervals. The first one he makes at seven is precautionary, in case she cancels her dinner with Wilson. The second, he reasons, is in case Wilson is that boring and the salad isn't really that good.

It's his fifth call that gets an answer, when he disobeys his own rule and calls at ten thirty.

He stays silent on the line after she says hello, secretly delighted that she's in too early for any sleepovers.

She, too, stays on and rolls her eyes at him before putting down the phone.

**Eight**

House, for the fun of it, throws his magic eight ball out the window. There's a crash and the sound of an alarm.

He annoys eight consecutive nurses by shooting them spitballs. He stops the elevator on the eighth floor for eight whole minutes. He treats eight annoyingly sick patients before walking out of the clinic for the day.

When Cuddy yells at him, What the hell have you been doing all day?

He just smirks and says simply, Celebrating. When she slams his door shut, fuming, he doesn't mind.

They've known each other for eight years now, after all.

**Freshmen**

She just knew him as a legend.

It pleases her to see Cameron duck her head when she snaps back, but the truth is, she only met him once in a freshman campus tour. Muddy from lacrosse, leering at her from the legs up, someone whispers, 'That's Greg House, he once recited all the answers to his midterms—perfectly—because he was too lazy to write.'

He, on the other hand, still remembers her cup size, her long legs, and the hazy awe in her blue eyes that gets him smirking through clinic duty any day.

**Golf**

Once, he challenged her to a golf match. Tennis, he says, is just beating the crap out of balls. Golf is the true art—hitting balls at its finest form.

Two weeks later, he's in the clinic complaining of leg pain.

Will you just lay off the voodoo pins? He pops his first Vicodin. I won't go easy on you just because of a little cramp.

Another week and he's limping. Two months and Stacy leaves. It's been eight years and they still haven't played. 

Sometimes she wonders if he would have won. Other times, she just wonders if he remembers.

**Help**

'Was that Cuddy's ninth secretary you've managed to scare?'

'No. You didn't count the fat snorty one and the Yale moron.'

'So you're chasing her secretaries away to—do her a favor?'

'What, you thought I was doing this for the sheer joy of watching them burst into tears and asking for resignation? Why, Jimmy!'

'She needs all the help she can get, you know, especially with employees like you.'

'Competent help, unlike that idiot who got lost because I told her she was in Seattle. I'm her freakshow guardian, protector of the princess from her retarded slaves, hero of the—'

**Iscariot**

The difference between her and Wilson, mainly, is that he asks for thirty pieces of silver and she for a hundred million.

After she votes to fire House, she goes out the conference room and Wilson meets her forever guilty eyes when she steps outside. Judas, he tells her without words.

(When she sees him outside Tritter's office, and knows what he's done, she nods to him. Judas, she tells him without words.)

The only reason she saves him in the end, redeems herself, is because she knows that if she didn't, she would hang herself with guilt as well.

**Japan**

On vacation when she is thirteen, she twists her ankle and waits three hours in the clinic waiting room. Her parents are complaining to the hospital administrator. 

When she becomes a doctor, she decides she wants her clinic running smoothly, and no one should wait hours for twisted ankles to get untwisted. Even the janitor comes over with his gruff beard and mop and tells her that a doctor should be coming soon.

The boy who came in thirty minutes ago, kicking chairs and upsetting nurses, snaps at him and says he's not surprised. If they can't cure a rash, how could they cure a twisted ankle?

She primly rolls her eyes at him.

When they call out the janitor to diagnose his rock climbing friend, he is speechless.

They both do not remember this, just one of those things lost between them.

But if someone were to ask (say, a coma guy) when he'd first wanted to be a doctor or when she'd first wanted to be an administrator, they would say it was this moment, when he is staring at the brilliant outcast janitor doctor, and she at the brilliant outcast boy, unsurprised because she knew all along.


	2. K to R

Ketamine

She doesn't have to force herself to get up anymore. Sometimes she even wakes up before the alarm and by the time it rings, she's out the front door in a sprint. She breathes the cold air and the last of the morning rain, and feels—_feels—_the chill.

When she reaches the park, he is usually beside her, easily keeping pace. They've been doing this for a month now, because House ran the minute he could walk. Sometimes he snatches her iPod and tosses her his. When he gives it back she has a new playlist—'Cuddy's list of unboring songs.'

Lock

'I really advise you not to go in there, Dr. House. She's been breathing fire and profanity for the past hour.'

'Oooh, my favorite flavor.'

'No, seriously. She just fired her newest secretary.'

'You must be new—she always fires her secretary.'

'She can't get into her inner office. Apparently, someone faked a page for Dr. Cuddy and dumped laxatives in her secretary's coffee, sneaked in, got her keys, and locked her out.'

'Really? Wow, who would have the nerve? Very luckily, I have three sets of her keys with me right now. A fourth one being made. Hey, Dr. Cuddy!'

Monster

With his hand on the doorknob, House turns around. 'How about monster truck jam all-access passes, Friday night?"

'No.'

'What, seriously? You say no to kidneys and all-access passes, what the hell do you say yes to? Aside from leather and chains?'

'All-access passes are a thousand bucks, and only owners get them,' Cuddy rolls her eyes. 'You can't trick or bribe me to bump him up on the list, House.'

'Oh you got me. You are such a non-girl.' He's going to ask Wilson instead. Cameron, probably. The five-year-old in him can't risk hearing the word 'no' again.

November

It's November when Stacy left him, he's sure. Partly because he can remember feeling really cold for the longest time even with three layers on, and partly because the page on his calendar stayed in November up until May.

Up until May because then someone had realized that his office was frozen in the time-space continuum, tore through the months, and decided to write 'Clinic duty, 9-12' on each day. He purposely ignores this, and she unfailingly rips out a page the first of every month until six years later when he does his first ever shift of clinic duty.

Overdose

She stares at her answering machine like it's grown a third head, because House's recorded voice just wished her a Merry Christmas. She picks up the phone and dials.

'I think House just did something monumentally stupid. I need you to get there and see if he's fine or if he's overdosed on whichever drug he stole. No, I can't. I might—' She stops. 'If he's alive and already vomited the pills, leave him. Just do it. He has to realize, he has to—he'll die if he goes to jail.'

She puts down the phone and tries to breathe.

Piano

While Cuddy gives Ian his medication, she hears the piano and the sound of the poker tables being moved downstairs. She talks to his parents and assures them that their son is fine, all the while hearing the music shift from melody to melody.

She tries to go down the stairs, but can't think of anything to say to him. She walks to an unoccupied room above the piano, closes the blinds and locks the door. Then she takes off her shoes, sinks down, presses her ear against the floor. Blue silk tangled in her legs, she listens to him.

Quiet

House has done his clinic duty for the day. Not only that, the nurses tell her he came on time and ended on time, too. For a while she is a little unnerved, and sits in her office waiting for a lawsuit or a murder charge. She finishes her paperwork uninterrupted and finds out that House has finished all of his cases.

She goes to his office, finds Wilson there playing poker, yells at House to update his patients' charts, and stalks away.

Wilson groans and hands over the money.

'Told ya she can't stand the peace,' House says smugly.

Rehab

On his first two days, he tries everything from origami to smoking to alleviate his boredom. On his third, he solemnly tells everyone in group session that he'll miss all their drug-addicted asses when he gets out tomorrow.

After he apologizes to Wilson, he yawns and says he's off to bed.

'You're not going to brood all night? You're not worried about tomorrow?' Wilson asks incredulously.

'Nope.'

'What makes you so sure that by tomorrow night, you're not in a four by four cell with a cellmate named Willie?'

'Cuddy.' He limps to his room. 'She's going to save me.'


End file.
